Tim Wayne

William Kristol is founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, a journal of politics and ideas located in Washington, D.C. He is also a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday, a contributor for the Fox News Channel and a monthly columnist for the Washington Post. Before starting the Weekly Standard in 1995, Mr. Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, where he helped shape the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory. Prior to that, Mr. Kristol served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the first Bush Administration, and to Education Secretary William Bennett under President Reagan. Before coming to Washington in 1985, Mr. Kristol was on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (1983-1985) and the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania (1979-1983).

Mr. Kristol has published widely in areas ranging from foreign policy to constitutional law to political philosophy. He has co-edited several books, including The Neoconservative Imagination (with Christopher DeMuth, 1995), Educating the Prince: Essays in Honor of Harvey Mansfield (with Mark Blitz, 2000), Present Dangers (with Robert Kagan, 2000), Bush v. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary (with E. J. Dionne, Jr., 2001), and The Future is Now: America Confronts the New Genetics (with Eric Cohen, 2002). He is the co-author, with Lawrence Kaplan, of the best-selling 2003 book, The War Over Iraq.

Mr. Kristol received both his A.B. (1973) and Ph.D. (1979) from Harvard University.

Gary Bauer served in President Ronald Reagan’s administration for eight years as Under Secretary of Education and as President Reagan’s Chief Domestic Policy Advisor. While serving at the Education Department, Bauer was named Chairman of President Reagan’s Special Working Group on the Family. His report, “The Family: Preserving America’s Future,” was presented to the President in December 1986.

A staunch supporter of President Bush’s war on terrorism, Bauer is also a leading Christian advocate for a strong and secure Israel. Since the atrocities of September 11th, Bauer has devoted considerable time and energy to strengthening the shared values of the Israeli/American alliance.

In 1996, Bauer launched the Campaign for Working Families, a political action committee dedicated to electing pro-family, pro-life conservatives to public office. In its first two years of operation, Campaign for Working Families raised $7 million with 90,000 individual contributors and today remains one of America’s largest conservative political action committees.

Bauer took his unapologetically pro-family, pro-life message across the country in 1999 and 2000 into the Republican presidential debates and primaries. Stressing the sanctity of life and traditional marriage, Bauer made family-friendly policies and combating judicial activism key platforms of his campaign.

He has continued to champion these and other causes at American Values, a non-profit educational organization Bauer founded after the 2000 presidential campaign. From American Values, Bauer has authored numerous op-ed pieces making the case for a federal marriage protection amendment and stressing the urgent need to rein in rogue judges. A vocal opponent of the “stealth strategy” for Supreme Court nominations, Bauer was an early critic of the nomination of Harriet Miers and enthusiastically backed Samuel Alito. During the Roberts and Alito Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Bauer was quoted more than one thousand times in newspapers across the country making the case for a conservative Supreme Court nominee.

In response to the recent criticism of Israel by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, today the chairman of the Emergency Committee for Israel, William Kristol, issued the following statement:

Nobody believes President Obama when he claims, as he did last week, that he “has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.” That’s because he hasn’t — and because President Obama and his administration keeps acting to weaken the security of the state of Israel.

For example: as reported in the Israeli press, the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman — a top Obama fundraiser in 2008 — told a conference in Brussels this week that Muslim anti-Semitism “stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.” Pardon us for retaining our belief that Muslim anti-Semitism in the Middle East predates 1967, and even 1948 — and in any case is the fault of the anti-Semites, not of the Jews.

At another conference, this one in Washington, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta surveyed the Middle East and discovered that at every turn, the Jewish state is to blame for problems in the Muslim world. Are there Arab uprisings that are bringing Islamists to power and endangering peace with Israel? Israel must placate the radicals. Are there constant provocations and taunts from Turkey’s Islamist government? Israel must beg for better treatment. Do Palestinians refuse to negotiate? “Get to the damn table,” Panetta thundered twice — as if Israel was refusing to talk, instead of the reverse.

Just about the only thing in the Middle East that President Obama hasn’t blamed Israel for is the Iranian nuclear program. But when it comes to this, too, instead of supporting crippling sanctions or preparing military strikes, the White House seems to spend more time deterring Israel from acting than deterring Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place. And the administration’s energy seems more focused on undermining Israel and those members of Congress pushing for a tougher approach to Iran, than in undermining the Iranian regime.

The Obama message is loud and clear: the world would be a safer, simpler, and more peaceful place if not for the troublesome Jewish state.

Ambassador Gutman’s comments were not way out of line with Obama’s worldview. Nonetheless, we expect he will be recalled because the Obama administration won’t want to expend political capital defending him. He should be recalled, of course. But what the events of recent days emphasize is that the problem is not with one ambassador or with one cabinet secretary. The problem is President Obama.”

Today the Emergency Committee for Israel published a full-page ad in five newspapers that calls on the Obama administration to stop treating Israel like a punching bag (view it below the jump). The ad appears in the New York Times, the Miami Herald, the Palm Beach Post, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and Variety.

The ad details the past month of Obama administration attacks on Israel: President Obama caught trashing the Israeli prime minister at the G20 summit; Defense Secretary Leon Panetta blaming Israel for the failure of talks with the Palestinians; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton comparing Israel to Iran; and the U.S. ambassador to Belgium declaring that Muslim anti-Semitism is Israel’s fault.

ECI chair William Kristol said: “The Obama administration has been using Israel as a punching bag. The pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community is punching back.”

Statement from William Kristol, chairman of the Emergency Committee for Israel, in response to President Obama’s speech today at the convention of the Union for Reform Judaism:

“I am proud to say that no U.S. administration has done more in support of Israel’s security than ours. None. Don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise. It is a fact.”

– President Obama, Friday, Dec. 16

“President Obama protests too much. It is not a fact that his administration has been strong in support of Israel. It is a fact that in the past month alone, Obama administration officials have blamed Israel for the failure of the peace process, blamed Israel for fraying relations with the increasingly Islamist governments in Egypt and Turkey, compared Israel to Iran, and blamed Israel for Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe. The president hasn’t clarified or repudiated any of these remarks. Israel’s security doesn’t come from campaign-season platitudes delivered to Jewish audiences. Israel’s security depends on an American president who stands with Israel all the time, in public and private, before audiences foreign and domestic — and whose administration’s first instinct isn’t to blame Israel first. The president’s wishes to the contrary notwithstanding, the Emergency Committee for Israel will continue to tell it like it is.”– William Kristol

The ad is slated to air next week in major South Carolina media markets on both television and talk radio, but is being released online today and can be viewed below.

Update, Monday, January 9th:

Last week, ECI recorded and released a statement by our director, Gary Bauer, on conservatism and foreign policy. Since then, Gary has decided to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary. In light of this, we’ve decided not to go ahead and buy airtime for this advertisement in South Carolina.